Recently a simple and quick way to exchange information between mobile electronic devices was developed. When people meet, they can bump their smart phones together to rapidly exchange business cards, music playlists, digital photos, money, or other information. The act of bumping tells a device to start information transfer.
Bumps between mobile devices occur when two devices at the same place at the same time indicate their intention to establish a connection for transferring information. Principles for determining when two devices are at “the same place at the same time” are described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/699,692, “Bump validation”, filed on 3 Feb. 2010 and incorporated herein by reference.
Bumps may also occur between mobile and fixed devices. If one of the participants in a bump is fixed at a known place, the problem of determining bump location for the fixed device is solved in advance. What are needed, therefore, are fixed bump terminals.